Stavros Nature Trails, Pafos Forest, Cyprus

Around Stavros tis Psokas in the Paphos forest there are several short but pleasant hikes. This album contains two of them. On the same day as these we also hiked to the top of the Tripylos mountain, which however got its own album.

The two trails shown here are remarkably different in character for being so geographically close to each other. The first, Moutti tis Stavrou, is a short (2.5 km) trail with few height meters, memorable for its fair flowers growing all over the path and spreading a sweet scent similar to the hackberry tree. As we visited in early mid May, the flowers were in their fullest bloom, just before the soil dries up for summer.

The second hike, called Chorteri trail, is slightly longer with 4,5 km and 300 height meters. It's very near the first trail along the road to Stavros, but the elevation slightly higher and the character completely different. Two kinds of trees are especially common along this path. On the first section (this is a circular trail, but the comment holds in both directions), Golden Oak, the national tree of Cyprus, enloses the path from all sides. Further up these are replaced by black pine. Now, "black pine" doesn't even come close to the great variety of pine trees that you'll actually find here. According to the helpful signs, there's a pine tree with fungus, and one with a cancer. As if this wasn't horrible enough, another pine has been struck by ligtning - the one "naturally fallen and dried" clearly was the lucky of the lot.